Responsibility Means Saying No

One of the podcasts I’ve been listening to while I travel is the backlist of Beyond the To Do List. It’s all about creating a more productive life. I was on Episode 21, which featured Christin Taylor. It’s a good podcast ep, particularly for Millennials (of which I am not), and something she said struck me as really interesting.

Christin and her husband were at a marriage retreat, and they each took a quiz which highlighted their strengths and weaknesses. She was really surprised when one of her husband’s strengths came out as responsibility and that was not one of her own strengths from the test. She felt like she was the one always committing to things and he was the one always saying no, so she she felt like she was the more responsible.

I found this really interesting. Like a lot of people, I sometimes have trouble saying ‘no.’ I’ve done a lot better in the last several years, but especially before that, I was terrible at it. It never occurred to me that saying yes all the time didn’t make me responsible or highlight that I was responsible. It actually made me a bit irresponsible, because I’d agree to do too many things and I’d do none of them well because I was spread so thin.

I’ve always considered myself to be a responsible person, even from a very young age, so this is a bit of a paradigm shift for me. But it’s one I want to make, because I see the validity in it being more responsible to limit what your name is attached to so you can do those things well, versus attaching your name to *everything* and all of them done in a mediocre way.

How about you? Have you ever thought about responsibility in this way? Or does this kinda blow your mind the way it did mine? Let me know in the comments!